From Eva Lawrence:
The JGSGB Herts group Zoom meeting last Sunday, May 31st seemed like a little piece of Heaven on earth, it seemed so for me and I'm sure that another participant, Bernard Miller, who attended although disability tied him to his own bed, would agree. My idea of heaven has always been to meet and talk with like-minded people on subjects of common interest, without necessarily a corporeal presence.
In the long term, the future of genealogy depends on the future of the family and by extension the future of mankind, but for all the participants at this meeting, it simply meant the future of Jewish genealogy, a much narrower subject.
Jewish genealogy is alive, well, and thriving, because Jewish history is varied, exciting and full of significant milestones and events. Interesting times may be cursed, but looking back on them from the comfort of your living room is a most agreeable way of passing the time – if you have time to spare. So we can't expect people busy trying to create the future whether by raising and supporting children, by pursuing politics or by looking at outer space, to take the same interest in crafting the details of their family history as the well-informed well-heeled attendees here.
Genealogy is becoming a consumer product already, and some of the next generation expect it ready-cooked on their plate. There is too much information at the Ancestry supermarket for them to discover easily the satisfaction of creating their own genealogy from scratch. But for Jewish youngsters, the stories, dare I say it, are a lot more appealing and worth remembering, than the cookery, so there's hope for JGSGB.
For the next generation however, the internet is their first port of call – not the private files of their grandparents on a digital storage medium, let alone in a book. For them, their family history will be primarily a social activity, as it has been for us too, of course. No-one really enjoys sitting at home eating their meal on their own. So we need to display our own stories on the shelves to tempt them. I'm as possessive as the next person – probably more than most – but that message was brought home to me when I googled the name of my favourite ancestor, and what came up was my own publication on a platform more leaky than JGSGB's Shemot.
That was why I'm suggesting that we make back issues of Shemot freely available on the internet after, say two years, without the need for even the modest JGSGB subscription. For shelf appeal, we do need to take care to provide informative titles for our articles, perhaps index them better, and make sure that we access them ourselves often enough to bring them near the top of the search engines. Don't let’s hug our goodies to our chests, rather leave them out for anyone who needs them to help themselves and ask simply that they acknowledge the source. Conversely, let us make sure that we acknowledge the sources of our own knowledge, which of course is the best validation of its reliability.
I've heard on the grapevine, that there are thoughts of putting Shemot on an educational platform to promote it, but this would involve passing on the copyright instead of making it creative commons – I know which I would prefer.
The JGSGB Herts group Zoom meeting last Sunday, May 31st seemed like a little piece of Heaven on earth, it seemed so for me and I'm sure that another participant, Bernard Miller, who attended although disability tied him to his own bed, would agree. My idea of heaven has always been to meet and talk with like-minded people on subjects of common interest, without necessarily a corporeal presence.
In the long term, the future of genealogy depends on the future of the family and by extension the future of mankind, but for all the participants at this meeting, it simply meant the future of Jewish genealogy, a much narrower subject.
Jewish genealogy is alive, well, and thriving, because Jewish history is varied, exciting and full of significant milestones and events. Interesting times may be cursed, but looking back on them from the comfort of your living room is a most agreeable way of passing the time – if you have time to spare. So we can't expect people busy trying to create the future whether by raising and supporting children, by pursuing politics or by looking at outer space, to take the same interest in crafting the details of their family history as the well-informed well-heeled attendees here.
Genealogy is becoming a consumer product already, and some of the next generation expect it ready-cooked on their plate. There is too much information at the Ancestry supermarket for them to discover easily the satisfaction of creating their own genealogy from scratch. But for Jewish youngsters, the stories, dare I say it, are a lot more appealing and worth remembering, than the cookery, so there's hope for JGSGB.
For the next generation however, the internet is their first port of call – not the private files of their grandparents on a digital storage medium, let alone in a book. For them, their family history will be primarily a social activity, as it has been for us too, of course. No-one really enjoys sitting at home eating their meal on their own. So we need to display our own stories on the shelves to tempt them. I'm as possessive as the next person – probably more than most – but that message was brought home to me when I googled the name of my favourite ancestor, and what came up was my own publication on a platform more leaky than JGSGB's Shemot.
That was why I'm suggesting that we make back issues of Shemot freely available on the internet after, say two years, without the need for even the modest JGSGB subscription. For shelf appeal, we do need to take care to provide informative titles for our articles, perhaps index them better, and make sure that we access them ourselves often enough to bring them near the top of the search engines. Don't let’s hug our goodies to our chests, rather leave them out for anyone who needs them to help themselves and ask simply that they acknowledge the source. Conversely, let us make sure that we acknowledge the sources of our own knowledge, which of course is the best validation of its reliability.
I've heard on the grapevine, that there are thoughts of putting Shemot on an educational platform to promote it, but this would involve passing on the copyright instead of making it creative commons – I know which I would prefer.
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